APEC, the training centre for the port of Antwerp, is to provide training for shipping professionals from the port of Santa Marta in Colombia for the next four years.

A Memorandum of Understanding to this effect has been signed in Bogota at a ceremony attended by Princess Astrid of Belgium.

Under the terms of the agreement APEC will be Santa Marta’s favoured partner for port-related training.

The MoU was signed by Mauricio Suárez Ramírez, general manager of the port of Santa Marta, and Paul Verkoyen, CEO of APEC-Antwerp/Flanders Port Training Centre.

Trainees are able to choose from three types of course: standard seminars, seminars tailored to the requirements of the visitors, and courses abroad. But in all cases the subjects covered by the seminars are related as closely as possible to the requirements of the market.

For the port of Santa Marta the courses will cover engineering, technical operations, and logistics & distribution, while the four-year programme will also include APEC’s latest seminar, Cold Chain Logistics, in which trainees learn about the operation of the logistics cold chain, from producer to consumer.

So far some 40 people from Colombia have followed an APEC seminar, some of whom now work for the port of Santa Marta.

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